LONDON: Postal workers plan 24-hour strike

THOUSANDS of postal workers in London are to stage a 24-hour strike in a dispute over jobs and services, threatening disruption to mail deliveries across the capital.

The Communication Workers Union said up to 10,000 of its members will walk out on June 19 after claiming that the Royal Mail is pressing ahead with "arbitrary" cuts in jobs and services.

Deputy general secretary Dave Ward said: "Royal Mail is blocking modernisation by refusing to negotiate change with the CWU."

He went on: "We have offered a moratorium on all strike action if Royal Mail will suspend executive action and enter into meaningful negotiations. We want to bring forward the successful transformation of the business by working together.

"There is growing unrest across the country as Royal Mail tries to impose damaging cuts and changes without the input of union reps. The future of the business must be safeguarded through careful planning, not shooting from the hip."

Workers in all areas of deliveries, collections and processing across London will take part in the strike and the union warned that further industrial action will be taken if the dispute is not resolved.

A deal was agreed after a national strike in 2007 on negotiating improvements in efficiency and modernisation, which the union said had ensured that the Royal Mail had built steady profits.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "The CWU's threat to customers of damaging strike action in London is completely at odds with its repeated claim to support modernisation and to introduce new ways of working throughout the business.

"A strike will not modernise Royal Mail - it will simply disrupt the service to which customers are entitled, lead to an even greater loss of business and leave Royal Mail far less able to protect full time jobs.

"As mail volumes fall we need to make changes and become more efficient right across the UK. Productivity in Royal Mail offices in London already lags behind the rest of the UK with the productivity in parts of London now up to 35 per cent below the best region and around 10 per cent worse than the UK average."